Tag: Jesus

Advent anticipates the coming of the Word

When I was in elementary school, there was a club for boys called “Junior Deputy Sheriffs.” Besides an ID card, members got a little badge, which many boys wore proudly, usually pinned to the right jeans pocket.  My brother had been a member, and as soon as I was old enough – 9? 10? – I joined and pinned on my badge.  We felt important, part of the team, though our duties consisted only of attending a monthly meeting.  Looking back, I think the unspoken primary goal was to help prevent us from getting into trouble. 

The meetings were in the auditorium after school, maybe once a month.  It was led by an aging deputy, who helped us learn more about law enforcement. I think he may also have been a part-time preacher. Each meeting began with a “devotional” in which he read or had one of us read the first verses of the beginning of the Gospel of John – “In the beginning was the Word . . .”   I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who found this passage confusing.  And when I got chosen to read one time, it was challenging even though I was always among the best readers in my grade.   When I aged out of the organization, there were things I missed. Having to listen to John 1 was not among them.

Yet many years later, I led Morning Prayers in Appleton Chapel at Harvard on a day early in Advent.  It’s a short service, allowing 2-3 minutes for the homily. The text I chose to discuss — John 1. 

Then, many more years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a sheltered part of my family held our own Christmas Eve service.  For the homily, my son (by then a Harvard Divinity School graduate) spoke about “The Prophecy” and I “The Fulfillment.”  As I began my preparation, I felt led to rely on – you guessed it – John 1. 

Here’s what I said in the 1970s service at Harvard:

This, as you may or may not have been able to decipher through all the tinsel, is the season of Advent.  The word “advent” comes from the Latin roots ad – “to or toward” – and vent from venio – “to come.”  Thus, this is a season to celebrate the coming to us of someone or something. 

There are a number of ways of interpreting the meaning of Advent.  Parades beginning before Thanksgiving, in big cities, small towns and in between, interpret Advent to mean “the coming of Santa Claus.” 

I want briefly to offer the fourth gospel’s interpretation: the coming of the Word of God into the physical realm of existence.   I also want to attempt to suggest what “Word” means and what it is. 

John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The concept of “The Word,” or Logos in Greek, as found in much of the religious thinking of the 1st Century Mediterranean world, is a topic for more time than I have, if not also more understanding.  Suffice it to say, it meant more than mere letters on a piece of parchment or an uttered sound.  Words were believed to be the essence of whose words they were.  “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

I suggest that the Advent of the Word-made-flesh means we are free.  We are liberated.  Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”  (John 8:31-32)

The Word came from God’s world — i.e., realm of being — to our world.  So, we know that God’s world exists.  We get a glimpse of it. This knowledge of a realm beyond our existence frees us from a lot of anxiety and uptightness.  It gives us the freedom to, as it were, “transcend” things such as institutions, customs, prejudices of this world that would seek to entrap us.

This knowledge does not, however, free us from responsibility toward this world.  Rather, it frees us to be responsible.  For, because of the Advent, our world is joined with God’s world, as the Word becomes flesh.  The difference between the two worlds is not a difference between “here” and “there,” but a difference between “here” and “more than here.”

We are freed not from having to love our fellow beings.  We are freed to love them.

And now to my suggestion of what the Word is: St. John tells us that the Word and God are one.  He, or someone with the same name, also tells us, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”  (1 John 4:16)

How this word was translated into human experience is the subject of all four gospels, but it can perhaps best be summed up into the word, “Love.”  The Word is God, and God is Love.  Love as exemplified by Jesus.

Another John — with another Paul — of our own time – that is Lennon and McCartney – express the whole idea in a song called “The Word”:  
“Say the word and you’ll be free” and “Have you heard, the Word is Love.”

______

Here are the thoughts I shared in our home service, Christmas Eve 2020:

At Christmas time in 1952, a couple of months before I turned 6, a sister of mine who was then in high school, joined with some of her friends to “adopt” a local family that would otherwise have a limited Christmas, at best. 

I wanted to help.  I dug five dimes out of my bank and gave them to her.  That 50 cents would be $4.88 today.  As I thought more about the needs of that family as compared to ours and about how surprisingly good I felt giving the money, I wondered if I was willing to do more. 

In my prized monetary hoard were two 50-cent pieces I was saving for no reason other than that I liked having them.  Could I possibly part with one?  Would I feel sad?  Dimes were a lot easier to replace.  Ultimately, I found myself taking out one of the 50-cent pieces and doubling my contribution.   What I felt was the direct opposite of sad. 

Then I read John 1:1-5:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

“Word” here doesn’t mean speech.  It’s the Greek word logos, which in Greek philosophy refers the controlling principle in the universe.  I’ve heard it suggested that we translate it here as “God’s creative energy.”  This text also calls it life and light.  It has always existed and was exhibited in human form through Jesus.  This is the introduction to the story of Jesus as told in the Gospel of John.   It doesn’t start with shepherds and a manger, but with the Word — creative energy — of God becoming flesh — taking on human form.

So, here we have a guy who is God’s Word-creative energy-light in flesh and blood.  

Whew!

So, where do I fit in? 

The next couple of verses suggest an answer.  Verse 6 introduces John the Baptist.  It says, “He was not the Light but came to bear witness to the Light.”

I realize now that’s what I did that time back in ’52 (and I hope at other times since) — reflected that Light.  (And I would note that when something is reflecting light, it is also lighted by it — and often warmed as well). 

That’s our job, as we are reminded at Christmas — to bear witness to God’s Light.  Our pastor put it this way in his streamed sermon last Sunday: 

“You don’t have to be the Messiah to make yourself useful.”

Some thoughts for Trinity Sunday

When Don McLean, in his hit “American Pie,” refers to “the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” as “the three men I admire most,” I suspect many people find that consistent with their own view of the Trinity. There is much that can be said about the anthropomorphic and gender problems with the word “men,” and I am among those who have a problem with those, but that discussion is for another time. I want to look at the number.

I think that most, if not all my Trinitarian friends will easily affirm a belief in One God. Yet the way many talk about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit sounds polytheistic at times. Thus, I can understand why my Unitarian friends can be led to scoff at such a notion.

I ascribe to the doctrine of the Trinity, yet I am a monotheist. Is that possible?

One God in three forms. Is that simple or complex? It seems simple until someone starts talking about the Trinity as “three men” or three seemingly independent beings. Why go out of the way to say “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” when it’s just one Being?

I saw a program on public TV many years ago that attempted to show how a two-dimensional being (i.e., length and width, but no depth) would experience a three-dimensional one.   As the three-dimensional being passed by, it would appear to the two-dimensional one in changing, two-dimensional forms. The 2-D cannot experience the 3-D any other way.   It has been suggested that our ability – or rather shortcoming thereof – to understand a Triune God is kind of like that. God has more dimensions than we do, thus appearing to us in different forms in different circumstances.  

Countless volumes have been written about the nature of God. I could write a lot of  words in trying to explain what I may understand on this topic at this point in my life, but I’m aiming here for a page, not a book.  Many words and phrases come to mind, including “Creative Force,” “Sustainer of Life,” “Power” and, especially, “Love.”   I grew up hearing the Bible verse “God is love.”   In recent years, I applied the “if A=B, then B=A” logic and have found it helpful to say also “Love is God.” 

And here’s something I don’t believe: I don’t understand God to be some white-haired and -bearded man in a robe sitting in some large chair somewhere up in the clouds.

I’ve always resonated well with the rock song “Jesus Is Just Alright with Me.” I find that I refer to “Jesus” in couple of differing, though related ways. In the past tense, I mean the historical figure who taught us a lot about God and how we should live. In the present tense, I am referring to God as revealed in the teachings and personal example of the historic person. “Christ,” to me, refers to the special and mysterious way in which God was present in the historical man, and to the spirit that he engendered and which lives on today in many people.

I’ll admit I’m a little hazy in distinguishing between “Spirit of Christ” and “Holy Spirit.” But maybe that’s OK, since both refer to God’s presence within us. I think perhaps one distinction may be that “Spirit of Christ” has to do with how we want to live and “Holy Spirit” how we can more nearly do so. Maybe “Christ” is the Love; the “Spirit” is the Power.

I’ve also learned that “Christ” means “God incarnate” – Jesus in the first Century and now the “Body of Christ,” which is the Church – and that the “Holy Spirit” is the “breath of God.” This suggests to me that the doctrine of the Trinity is a reminder that God is living and breathing. That’s helpful to me, as is remembering that “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” can mean “We honor You in all the ways we experience Your Presence.”

At this moment in my journey, I find that I identify as a Unitarian Jesus freak, empowered by the Holy Spirit.